But it has done nothing to dull their memories or dim their pride, as this remarkably powerful collection of photographs makes clear.

Gathered for the Mail, these are the men and women of D-Day, then and now.

The stakes were never higher than on the morning of June 6, 1944, when an Allied force of 156,000 stormed the Normandy beaches.

Eddie Wallace, 90, was serving with 86th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Honourable Artillery Company and landed at Juno Beach. The memories are still hauntingly vivid. 'I still can't forget all the dead bodies that were floating around us when we landed,' he says. 'One or two of the lads were sick when they saw that.'

Pat Churchill, 90, was with the 2nd Royal Marines Armoured Support Regiment, which landed on Juno Beach. He can't forget all the boats that were sunk. Around 90 landing craft were lost out of 306 vessels on Juno alone. 'There must have been hundreds of men who died and I was thinking, you poor devils,' he recalls.

Vera Hay, 92, of the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps, was one of the first nurses to arrive after D-Day and took care of up to 200 injured soldiers a day at her field hospital, both British troops and German PoWs. 'They needed rehydration, rest and morphine, and we were using a new medicine - penicillin,' she says.

Even now, Fred Glover still cannot bring himself to say what’s in his mind when the Last Post sounds.

Some things are between him and the chaps who never came home. He would have been among them had an act of kindness to a wounded German not saved him from summary execution.

This week, these veterans will return to Normandy, as many do every year. This time, though, they will be accompanied by royalty, heads of state, tens of thousands of well-wishers and battalions of international media for the 70th anniversary of D-Day.

Geoff Pattinson, 90, of 9th Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, was in one of the gliders but the tow rope snapped before they got to France, forcing the glider to land. 'I couldn't believe we had landed in England,' he remembers. He flew again that day and was wounded later in Normandy by a German machine gun.

David Tibbs, 94, a Captain Medical Officer in the 225th Field Parachute Ambulance, 6th Airborne Division, treated hundreds of paras severely injured in the drop and was awarded the MC. 'I was looking out of the Dakota and saw the surf breaking on the coast,' he recalls. 'At that moment we were given the order to jump.'

Frank Rosier, 88, a private serving in 2nd Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment, landed on Gold Beach. Three months later, in intensive fighting in Normandy, he was wounded by a mortar, losing his eye. 'The carnage on the beach brought me to a complete standstill,' he remembers. 'It was so horrific it has stuck with me to this day.'

Stretched across a 50-mile front, it was a vast battlefield. Yet two of those pictured here will be going back to the same spot.

Their story exemplifies the courage and sacrifice of countless Allied troops.

Fred Glover and Geoff Pattinson were among 750 men of the Parachute Regiment’s 9th Battalion — 9 Para — whose task was to land at night by parachute and glider and seize the enemy gun battery at Merville, which threatened carnage when thousands of British troops landed on Sword Beach at dawn.

Their plan went awry from the start, as much of 9 Para came down in the wrong place. Many drowned in flooded fields, and commanding officer Lt-Col Terence Otway reached the battery with just 150 men.

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Eddie Linton, 88, was a Royal Navy able seaman on board the River-class frigate HMS Mourne. His defining memory of that momentous day? 'Coming on deck for watch early that morning and seeing all those ships. I'd never seen so many ships in all my life. That's when I knew something was going to happen.'

Fred Glover, 88, was a member of 9 Para, and assigned to crash-land in a glider on the Merville gun battery and take it out. He was wounded, captured, narrowly escaped execution, and later escaped from a Paris hospital, 'When we crashed, we immediately ran into a German patrol,' he remembers, 'and we sprung into action.'

Alastair Mackie, 92, an Air Commodore flying Dakotas with the RAF's 233 Squadron, dropped members of the 3rd Parachute Brigade. Taking off at one in the morning, he flew straight to the drop zone. It was hairy stuff, he recalls. 'The Royal Navy were to our right and I was terrified they would mistakenly shoot us down.'

Edwin 'Ted' Hunt, 94, was a captain in the Royal Engineers, commanding ferries on Gold Beach. He remembers how quickly the wounded were being attended to and returned to England by landing craft. 'It was hugely reassuring that if we did get injured we could be back in England that afternoon,' he says.

One of the three gliders had aborted over England while the other two were shot up on the way in. Fred, in one of them, was shot through the legs. He crawled out of the wreckage and straight into a German patrol that he helped to fight off while the main force heroically overran the battery.

Now down to 75 men, 9 Para moved on.Fred was left with two wounded Germans and gave one his morphine. When an enemy patrol arrived he was beaten up and heard a machine pistol being cocked. But then one of the wounded Germans explained how Fred had helped him, and he was spared.

Is it any wonder Fred Glover, and all these veterans, remember D-Day as if it were yesterday? This week, let us all remember it too.

* Fred Glover will be speaking at Wiltshire’s Chalke Valley History Festival, from June 23 to 29. Other D-Day events include actor Damian Lewis and Normandy re-enactments — cvhf.org.uk